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Review: SliMP3
So what is it? Its a small MP3 player with no internal storage of its own. It has an ethernet port, RCA audio outputs (you'll need an external amp!), and a power plug. It has a really bright little screen for displaying song information and a remote. It's about the size of a car stereo faceplate, but a little thicker.
It doesn't have a fancy plastic box. The backside is simply an exposed circuit board. But thats sorta the idea: this is a toy that can work for users, but is also hugely designed to be a hacker toy.
Configuring the device is easy. The latest version has DHCP, but I tested it on a network that lacked the protocol. I put the IP in of my 'Server' and gave the unit its own IP and I was off and running. The server is a perl program you download from the Slim Devices web site. It supposedly will run on on Linux, Windows, MacOS, FreeBSD, BeOS, and MacOSX. It worked great on my linux box. Trivially easy. This unit was the easiest to set up of any MP3 player I have ever used. Of course, I was already running Linux and had Perl ;)
You can control the SliMP3 with a remote control, but the server optionally can just serve up HTML on a high port number and set your playlists up via an acceptable web interface. And since its perl, its all ready for you to hack yourself. The code itself is fairly legible... there's a mailing list, and it is actively being developed.
The closest competitor to the SliMP3 is the Audiotron. The audiotron is almost the same price, has an optical output, a more developed HTML interface, and is physically a nice stereo component. It is a far more mature product. But the audiotron uses SMB file sharing and controls everything within itself. The SliMP3 uses an open source server program to stream the audio to the player. So the smarts are mostly on the PC. Which of course lends itself to easy hacking.
The interface currently is pretty sparse. Some places display filenames where ID3 tags would be preferred. I was unable to get it to load a 20,000 track playlist. But the server software is under active development, and these things should both be resolved in a not-so-distant release.
There are a variety of cool projects that could conceivably be hacked into this thing. A GTK-Perl interface would be super smooth. Cross-fade functions. Intelligent playlist creation. Tivo style thumbs up-thumbs down track rating for music playback. And this is the first MP3 player I've seen that things like this are possible because the code is right there and ready to rip apart. It's even legible!
If you need a pretty box, or demand optical connections to your reciever, go with the audiotron. If you want something tiny, or just want to hack at your MP3 player stereo component, this is a great way to go.
Pretty cool, but I'm waiting for a player that supports ogg files too, since all my own music is encoded that way. Once there's a nice high storage player that supports oggs too, I'll go for it.
:-)
I also see a fairly limited use for this sort of thing, since most people probably want a player that has a fair amount of local storage. While this thing is really cool if you're on a network, most of us don't really have the capability to use it. I wish I was on the kind of network that would allow this to be useful though.
Now totally OT, but I'm glad Taco's been posting today again. He's still got the best story choices of all the editors.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
I've seen some blatant advertising on /. before, but nothing like this. This device is not innovative or new--it plays MP3's. Half the readers of this site have built something more effective (or at least claim to have done so) and probably for 2/3 the price. Is this OSDN's new revenue model? Using Taco as a SpokesDroid for hackneyed wares?
Hate trolls? Troll 'em back...at home!
$250+ for an MP3 player that doesn't have it's own storage with a display that doesn't exactly look as professional as other MP3 players on the market...
And it's not even availiable yet! I wonder how CmdrTaco got his. A "free" review copy perhaps?
I wrote a playlist generator and a frontend for it that has a thumb up/down feature. :) I thought you might enjoy it. You could easily adapt ti for use in such an app for the SliMp3.
m s/ sondra/
source, screenshots (of frontend), etc:
http://www.csh.rit.edu/~benjamin/desktop/progra
-Benjamin Meyer
Do you changes clothes while making the "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh" transformation sound?
Presumably you can have multiple players on the same network, each playing back different content from the same centralized server.
The idea here, which I particularly like, is that you'd set up one "server" with stored copies of all your MP3s on it, and then put one of these and a pair of powered speakers in each room where you want music: the bedroom, the kitchen, the dungeon, etc. That way, you can play any music from any room in the house at any time without needing complete stored copies of the whole collection in each room.
Now all it needs is a built-in 802.11b wireless ethernet setup...
-Mark
I realize that this article is about a home MP3 system, so this may be slightly off topic, but I just bought an awesome MP3 player.
It's the Diva3032 MP3 player. I got it for $69 with 32 megs built in. But the best part is that it takes CompactFlash, up to 2 Gigs (!!!). And when you plug it in (under win2k, maybe linux?) it automatically mounts as an additional drive letter so you can drag and drop MP3's on (and off) it.
So I got a 128 MB CF card off of pricewatch for $48 and now I have a 160MB player for $120.
It's about _half_ the size of a deck of cards, and runs for (supposedly) 10 hours on a single battery. The digital display is pretty lacking, but who cares if it's in your pocket? The sound quality is good, and the volume goes high enough to hurt my ears.
I went to this after bad experiences with a JazzPiper/Cabo, and even worse experiences with the Toshiba MEA-110. The Cabo's parallel connection just plain stopped working, and the Toshiba uses a "library manager" so draconian it makes me want to die.
My current idea is this - I have seen a CompactFlash to PCMCIA adapter. Heck I have even seen a CF to IDE adapter (the wrong way though). So why not plug a freakin hard drive in it when you are in the car? I think all you need is 5V. Does anyone have any experience with this?
I promise I am not the guy selling these, but the main page is at www.mydivaplayer.com and the place i got it for $69 is at www.mydigitaldiscount.com. Shamless plugging, I know, please keep the flames to a low broil.
Just my 2 cents.
muerte
That's right, I need ultra-high fidelity sound from my computer. Sure. Why, mp3's are God's gift to mankind with their lossy, although not as bad as cassette tapes, format.
Look, if I wanted ultra-high fidelity sound in the first place, I wouldn't be listening to mp3's, I'd be using the original CD's in a 500-disc changer. But, since it's a pain to manage 1000+ songs when no one cares that much about crystal clear quality at a party I'm planning on hosting come Jan 1st, I think my PC sound card and simple audio/video outs will do just fine, thank you very much.
Sorry if that's a flame, but not all of us are audio-philes with $5,000 systems, and therefore, buying another $260 worth of equipment that I already have is completely unnecessary.
They should be marketing the "Digital receiver" and a digital media server for businesses.
With that they could wire music into every were there is a existing network drop.
With a little modification to the software on the server I am sure they could do forced broadcasts for warnings in the building and company propaganda.
In a building that is already networked it could very well be cheeper then the "tradional" PA system.
In the home envirment I really think it needs to be more "sterio" like and have some form of storage on board to store the music so the server does not always need to be on.. Otherwise it boils down to what a lot of people are saying..
Nothing more then WinAmp with a remote control.
what about mp3 players that are designed for us athletes? the nike one looks pretty crummy. sony has the memory stick walkman, but it's expensive and the software is crummy ( i hear).
which mp3 player is the runner's choice?